Mahsi for that. It's been about two months since closing our border and providing a check point to screen people and recommend self-isolation. In this time, check point procedures should have paid particular attention to all occupants in the vehicles and tested them for the coronavirus. Every day that I enter this building, I am temperature tested for signs of the fever, and I haven't even crossed the border. Will the Minister commit to providing more stringent controls and enforcement officers to check points in light of this pandemic?

At this point, I have not heard that having extra staffing at the border controls was an issue. We did know that, with the fire season, some of our public health officers had to go back to their positions in departments. We are actively looking for other recruitments in that area. I would love to be able to say that every person who came across, if we just took their temperature, they would be okay, and they could come in. My worry with doing that, in honesty, Mr. Speaker, is that sometimes people are asymptomatic. Not everybody will have a temperature. If we start taking that temperature, does that give people the false security that we are okay? That is my biggest worry for this whole summer, is people think that we are in this bubble. We are not in a bubble, Mr. Speaker. We do have gaps in our border, so my worry is about the caution and making sure that people take this seriously.

Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke earlier today about a guaranteed basic income, but I would like to start by focusing on what the closest program we have to that in the Northwest Territories is, income assistance. My question for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment is: is our current Income Assistance Program working? Are people actually incentivized to get a job, or is it simply just keeping people in a cycle of poverty? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have said before in this House that we could always do better with every program in the territory, and the Income Assistance Program is one of those. The Member asks whether it's working, and that depends on what exactly people want out of the program. There is a seniors' component where seniors are supported, and we are not trying to incentivize people who have aged out of the workforce to get back to work. There is a program for persons with disabilities who just can't work. We are not trying to incentivize them. The program is there to help people with their basic needs, and, in that sense, it is working. We make sure that, if there is a home for someone, if someone will rent a home to a person, we will pay for that. If someone can't afford a home but someone is willing to rent to that person, we pay for that, and we will give them money for food, so, in that sense, it's working. Is it a program that is allowing people to get back to work? For some people, it is. There are people I work with who have been on income assistance at a point in their life and have used it as a stepping stone to get further. With that being said, it's not the program that the Member is describing, one which is doing a very good job at getting people out of poverty. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate that answer from the Minister, and I do recognize that the seniors and disability streams, the goal of those programs is not to get people back into the workforce. I do think, at the heart, both a guaranteed basic income and income assistance's goal is to get people into the workforce, but on their own terms.

I previously asked questions to the Minister regarding looking into a pilot project for a guaranteed basic income, and he said we simply don't have the policy staff. Given we are now in a global pandemic and entering into one of the largest economic recessions of any of our lifetimes, has the Minister's view on that changed?

We actually have less staff now than we did when the Member asked that questions. There are dozens of employees from ECE who have moved over to Health to help with those efforts. There are employees working from home who are having issues accessing government files, and things like that, so we are in a worst position to do that type of work, especially given what we have.

I appreciate the Member's comments earlier that we could start this program tomorrow, if we wanted. This pandemic has shown that departments can be responsive, and they can move quickly. However, I don't know if we can move that quickly, spending half a million dollars on a program that doesn't exist today that needs to be put into regulations that we need to have metrics on, and things like that.

Since day one, I have been committed to improving the Income Assistance Program. I agree with the Member that we should adapt that program or reform that program so that it does incentivize getting people to work, and that is not an easy task. It's not as easy as giving people $36,000 a year. That's not necessarily going to do it, so I'm working with the department to try and turn what we have into something approximating what the Member is talking about, understanding that, if we do want something like a guaranteed basic income, it is a decade away, as the Member stated.

I recognize that, perhaps, times when I say it can be implemented tomorrow, the program delivery model still needs to be there, and it will take some time, and I appreciate that many of the hard-working ECE staff have been redeployed. I guess that was almost a yes that the Minister is willing to work with me and have some of these further conversations. I'm concerned that he feels he doesn't have the policy staff in the department right now. What efforts are being made such that the department has the staff who can actually develop a program or a roadmap so that we can have a meaningful conversation about this issue?

On a regular basis, I badger the Minister of Finance and the Premier to give me more policy staff so I can pursue some of these types of initiatives, but, in the end, ECE does a lot of work. We provide a lot of people with a lot of support, and that's what the focus is on right now, especially during the pandemic. I would love to be able to go out and get some more policy staff to do this type of work in the background, but I think that the staff we have right now are doing a great job at delivering services that are needed and being adaptive and responsive to the situation and, in this environment, those staff can learn from what's happening right now and work toward those types of improvements. Because, you know, this pandemic has taught everyone a lot of lessons, and I'm going to make sure that those lessons don't go to waste.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that, and I will pester my other colleagues in Cabinet to try and get you some more policy staff. In the interim, to me, one of the hearts of a guaranteed basic income is allowing people to work and have that income not be penalized. I recognize that, in Section 21 of the regulations, there is a formula for how people are penalized as they earn income on Income Assistance.

Right now, I believe this punishment is disincentivizing people from working, especially if you're also in public housing. By the time it comes around, if you've been earning a little bit of income and you're reassessed, you're losing half of your money. If you're earning $15 an hour in the Northwest Territories, it's more like you're earning $7 an hour, and I don't see any reason for someone to work like that. My question is: is the Minister willing to look at increasing some of the exemptions to allow people to earn more income on Income Assistance? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I've already done that work. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will say that the Member has to be careful when she goes home to her riding. She might have offended a previous Minister who would say that every government in the Northwest Territories has lobbied hard to the federal government for additional money for the Northwest Territories, and I carry that forward. The reality is that every Assembly has asked for additional monies, and not only ourselves. We tend to partner as the three territories, with Nunavut and Yukon Territory, because we are all in the same situation.

Every government that I have known and that I have taken part in, and this government, too, has talked about our opportunity gaps. We are not even the same place as the South. We don't have the highway systems. We don't have the bandwidth. We don't have the health centres. We don't have the housing. We have been saying that for many years. Now that COVID-19 has hit us, we are going in stronger, so now we're talking about how we started at a deficit with our opportunity gap, and it would not be okay for us to go back 50 years from where we've come. That is the message we carry forward all the time, that we need additional money for the territories because of this. Every Minister sitting here is carrying that message, and I have to give credit to Nunavut and the Yukon Territory, who are all carrying the message, all three of us together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Premier, for your answer. There's another component to my question: we know we have talks of an election, maybe, in the fall, so do we have an idea of when we can expect more resources to flow north to help us, as a government, to tackle some of these issues?

How quickly they learn to be politicians. They know that there's an election coming up for the federal government. Actually, I have to say, in fairness to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister has recognized, not only in this government, in the last Assembly, as well, that the territories are at a deficit. They have always given us extra money.

For example, for this Assembly, since COVID-19, I believe we got just over $23 million for the GNWT for our own COVID-19 expenses. We got $8.7 million for airlines. We got $35 million for businesses, and my understanding is that more will be coming. This is on top of the money that was given to every other jurisdiction, so the three territories actually have built strong relationships with the federal government, and we will carry that forward right through the election.

With COVID, like I said yesterday and today, it really highlighted a lot of our deficiencies, and I think, when we saw the money coming from the federal government flowing, it was almost like they are living the life that we have been living every day. That is our normal. That is why, all of a sudden, Ottawa opened up its pockets. I just want to make sure that they continue, the Ministers, and I know you've said it, but continue to press because, if we do have a federal election, we don't know how some of these things are going to change. Would the Premier commit to that, making sure that we are pushing hard, especially over these next few months until the fall?

Yesterday, I talked about being called names in here, some I don't accept and other ones I would accept. I haven't heard my name again being called as "easy." Talking about building relationships with the federal government is something that we are focusing on, positive relationships with them. It has proved to be fruitious. The other thing I am doing is also talking already about, and most Premiers are talking about, "What are we doing now?" We are starting to look at a recovery; but I have been talking about that since the beginning.

Every time we give something, like, for example, when we gave the extra money for childcare staff or childcare parents and stuff, and then, when we put people who were homeless into apartments, my conversations at the FMM table have been, "These are the right things to do, Mr. Prime Minister. How can you ask me to pull these back?" So I have already started the conversations and putting the bugs in. That is the message I will carry forward because, Mr. Speaker, it's right. How can I? If we have people who are homeless in housing, how can we put them on the street again? Those are not only questions that I ask because we need help. Those are the right questions to be putting at that table.

Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral question. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister of Finance who administers the NWT Wage Top-up Program. As I said earlier today, I support this program. However, it's not clear how it relates to, for example, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. Can the Minister explain the relationship or difference between the NWT Wage Top-up Program and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Minister of Finance.